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Username Post: Another Illustration of What Happened Post-2015        (Topic#23325)
mrjames 
Professor
Posts: 6062

Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
09-26-19 03:28 PM - Post#288021    

The last time Harvard had a class like this, it went from having won/shared four-straight Ivy titles to finishing below .500 in the Ivies and out of the national Top 150 for the only time this decade (in fact, that was Harvard's only single digit Ivy win campaign this decade).

I've heard from some Harvard fans I know recently that they fear a similar step back after the historic 2016 class graduates. I suspect that topic of conversation will come up again once people return to these boards full time as the season gets underway. So, I figured I'd run through what happened here as a thread to point to when this comes up.

247Sports now has a cool feature where you can go through and see a list of a school's All Time basketball recruits (well... back as far as there are records, so really just to the mid-2000s... plenty for our purposes though). Here's the list of every class under Amaker and their rank on the Harvard "all-time" list:

2020: 11, 14, NR
2019: 1, 6, 21, 25, 35
2018: 5, 9, 12, 24
2017: 26, 58, NR
2016: 2, 4, 8, 10, 27, 28, 46
2015: 31, 32, 39, 40
2014: 15, 34
2013: 3, 59

2012: 16 (T)
2011: 7, 17, 23, 29, 33, 47 (T)
2010: 22, 38
2009: 19, 20, 30
2008: 18 (T), 36, 37, 41, 43, 52, 54
Pre-Amaker: 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57

Now, some important notes:

1) As you can tell from the size of some of the classes, the rankings miss some folks entirely (in the 2012 class, for instance, Chambers, Cummins and Okolie are missing, which is crazy; Kyle Casey isn't in the 2009 class; Rivard isn't in 2010).

2) There's some general ratings creep here (seems like slightly more generous scores are given on average now... it's slight, but noticeable).

But the purpose here is to look at the 2013, 2014 and 2015 classes, which happen to be well represented. Over three years, Harvard brought in two players in the Top 30 of its all time list. Oh yeah, and one of those two players was a bust.

Harvard's 2017 class was actually a pretty scary start, as it looked a lot like those 2013 and 2014 classes. But 2018, 2019 and 2020 have all been solid classes with good depth and a few nice top-end pieces. None of those classes individually can compete with 2016, but combined, the ratings would have the three classes as much better than 2016, something you couldn't say for 2013-2015 relative to last super-class prior to 2016, which was 2011.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: Another Illustration of What Happened Post-2015
09-26-19 03:38 PM - Post#288022    
    In response to mrjames

If Harvard is not crazy-good this year, it will be a failure at the organizational level. Man for Man, they are loaded. Just have to get them to play together.

 
mrjames 
Professor
Posts: 6062

Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
Re: Another Illustration of What Happened Post-2015
09-27-19 01:55 PM - Post#288053    
    In response to palestra38

All going to come down to injuries... every year of the 2016 class era, Harvard has either been destroyed by injuries from the start OR has limped to the end of the year (or both).

Since their freshman years, Bryce and Seth have been in the starting lineup together for 5 games and have played significant minutes (10+ a piece) in just 9 games together. Even getting the seniors to mesh is going to be difficult, given how shockingly little the two POY-level pieces have played together.

Tommy has used at least 7 different starting lineups in the non-conf each of the last three seasons and despite the fact that it is a penchant of his, most of the recent juggling has been due to injury. This team can't afford any injuries if it wants to achieve its potential. It needs to build a core rotation and assign roles quickly, because for as senior laden as this team is, actual experience together is limited.

 
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